


The Traces We Leave

by angstangelo



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Blow Jobs, Fluff, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 09:14:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6797998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstangelo/pseuds/angstangelo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Dan is working in a café for uni and Phil is a customer with paint splattered arms who takes his coffee with an unnecessary amount of sugar.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Phil gets there before him, surprisingly, leaned against the passenger’s door of a dark blue car in his oddly bright colours and his skin luminescent. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about this, Dan thinks. Nothing poetic about meeting a boy under a sky polluted with neon lights and car exhaust. Except it was, kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Traces We Leave

The early twenties were supposed to be a time for you to _get out there._ To party. To drink. To gather your own collection of first times. Yet at 20, Dan found himself in the same place every weekend, walking with a resigned step through the front door of the tiny café down the street with, swirling image of a steaming mug losing its welcome with every week it stuck there. Every Saturday and Sunday without fail, dealing with spilt milk and chocolate powder as an excuse for wasting time by earning a meagre amount of money. Money which he was likely to never have a chance to actually spend, because any socialising was out of the question, and the only thing that he was drinking was the occasional black coffee that, to be honest, was disgusting without the customer’s luxury of masses of sugar and milk. He spent too much of his time slumping over uni work or rolling around on the carpet of his dorm groaning to so anything vaguely productive or social. He was almost sure the clear tinkle of the wind chime hanging over the entrance had become more integrated into his life than his ringtone.

Days were almost mechanical in their fluidity within this place. Swipe through the overflowing coffee grounds. Sweep that up later. Slap a piece of wet cloth on tables 0.2 seconds after their occupants leave. Twist right around after that to tend to the cashier. Back to the tables. Repeat. Again and again and again. Variation? No. It was always the same dark brown aprons, the same white embroidered logos, the same smiles and rattling coins. Still, if you asked Dan what else he’d rather do, he wouldn’t have an answer. Because better have the stiff repetition within a cloud of rich, milky aromas than the suffocatingly musty dampness back at university.

The customers could either be the worst or best part of the job. Dan clicked at the keys of the register, pressing in whatever they parroted to him off the menu above his head. Sometimes, he got a sweet smile and thank you. Most of the time, they turned away as soon as they were done talking. Occasionally, a vaguely familiar face would turn up, and Dan would be obligated to decipher the meaning behind ‘the usual, please.’

It was only two hours into his shift, but already, he was tired. Staying up until 3:30am the night before probably was not the best idea. Comically ironic that he was trying to suppress a yawn in the midst of boiling caffeine.

“Latte with three sugars, please” someone says, voice significantly softer than the sharp demands that he was used to. It was nice. Kinder to his head.

“Three twenty.” He lets the reply come automatically to him, trying with too much effort to not sound monotone. He stares fixedly at the pixelated figures on the tiny screen, and cups his outstretched hand to allow the money to be tipped in. Blearily, he notices a bright splash of blue paint smeared across the palm under the metal coins, dark smudges of charcoal lining the edges of his fingers. He let his eyes flick up the arm belonging to the hand, taking in the man standing there. Through the greys and beiges of the morning, he stood out extraordinarily, a sight that made him blink with just a bit more interest.

The guy was pale, but that only made all the colours stand out even more. Green flannel sleeves were rolled casually up his arms, bunched up somewhere around his elbows, and blemishes of paint were spread all over his skin, in faded yellows and blues and greens and reds that hadn’t quite been scrubbed off, a living palette layered with old paint. Black hair fell in a soft mop of fringe over his forehead, and his eyes were a shade of blue that made them seem like they had been cut out of the sky and pasted onto the angular face. A face that he now realises was looking at him with blatant concern.

“You okay?” he asks in his quietly distracting voice, brows furrowing slightly.

Dan’s face felt warm. He coughed in a lame attempt to reverse the extremely lame fact that he was staring.

“Y..Yeah.” He let the man pay for his drink. “Three sugars is a lot,” he tries.

The guy huffs with laughter. “Think I need the extra energy.”

He studies Dan’s face, taking in the bruised looking skin under his eyes.

“You look like you could do with it too”

Dan shrugged. “Uni life,” he says. “It’s normal”

Paint guy winces sympathetically. “Got out of there last year” he says. “You should take care of yourself. Take a break sometime.” He frowns at himself like he’s just as confused as Dan as to what’s coming out of his mouth. “Sorry,” he backtracks hastily. “You don’t even know my name and I’m trying to give you advice.”

Dan only looks at him, mildly bewildered. A blond ponytail swishes past him and places the guys order on the surface next to him. He hands the disposable paper cup to the man, liquid sloshing inside scalding his hand.

“I’ll try it,” he manages.

The man’s lips form into a small smile. “Good.” He takes the coffee, fingers fluttering with the sudden warmth. “See you around,” his eyes flick down to Dan’s chest, where a lopsided plastic name tag is pinned onto his apron. “Dan.”

His name rolls off his tongue with sweet ease, and Dan tips his head at an angle to watch his retreating form with a tiny lurch of disappointment, before turning to the next customer, a screaming child whose bloodcurdling shrieks for chocolate are stabbing at every nerve in his brain. The smile he attaches onto his face is drier than the flaking white specks of plaster hanging from the roof.

-

-

The next time he sees him, he’s wearing red, and he can’t tell if the paint dripped in crisscrossing slashes through the fabric have always been there. The guy recognises him, it seems, because he stands propped against the display case while someone else is serving at the desk, even though there was virtually no queue.

As soon as she’s sick of the customers, she looks at Dan pleadingly, and he steps into the space behind the register, switching places at the coffee machine with a grateful smile and a swish of pink tipped hair from his co-worker. Almost immediately, the man mirrors his movements and steps in front of it.

“Hey,” he says. His grins brighter than the yellow caught in between the strands of his hair.

Dan attempts a small smile back. “Hello.”

He sets his elbows on the counter, leaning slightly forwards, almost challengingly. “Medium Latte, please?”

“Three sugars?”

Blue eyes dance at him, seeming pleased with the question.

“You remembered,” he says simply.

Dan cleared his throat to clear the sudden cotton-like feeling wedged in his oesophagus.

“s’pose I did”

“Do you _always_ remember people’s orders?”

His eyes pin Dan to that one point in conversation, and his tongue might as well be a slab of concrete because it stubbornly refuses to move. Stuck there embarrassingly, staring at irises that are looking just as intently back at him, laughter springing forward in the pupils as they study his face.

“nO.” He squeaked. His voice went momentarily back to his sickeningly awkward teenage years in a horrifying yelp. It was humiliating, and Dan almost crashed his skull into the plastic keys of the register with embarrassment. Paint-Arms laughs, a light sound that vibrated with deep warmth.

He breaks the contact between their eyes, smiling with a smug snicker hidden between his lips, and sips the coffee Dan hadn’t noticed had been placed next to him. He doesn’t leave immediately through the door this time, instead flopping into a table by a window, small black book held open on his propped up knees. Dan didn’t have the heart to tell him to get his feet off the seat. He hunched over the page, pencil moving rhythmically across the paper, the side of his hand sweeping over it.

Dan kept about his job half heartedly, making coffee and serving customers and refilling the milk, and pretended he wasn’t staring at the person curled up on the booth with faded red cushioned seats out of the edges of his vision.

When his co-workers finally realised that Dan was being more of an annoyance behind the counter than a fully functional worker, they practically pushed him out with a wet cloth in his hand, completely disregarding his reluctant pleas. He sighed, and started at the table furthest away, watching the foamy soap slowly froth on the surface and wiping it away with sluggish precision.

By the time he made it to the the drawing figure, morning was starting to bleed into noon, and the sun through the windows glared off the page illuminating it with a harsh glow that didn’t seem to trouble the shoulders still bent over it.

The cloth met the table top with a wet slap, and he looks up, mildly startled, only to see the coffee coloured eyes flickering with a sense of nervousness between him and the table, pink washed over the top of his cheek. He was close to beautiful, he thinks. His features fit exactly where it looked perfect. He seemed like the kind of person you would only have several seconds to admire before they’d be swept away, and the only memory that stuck with you was the way their jaw framed a face, or how the curve of a fringe graced the soft skin of someone’s ear. Dan felt like one of those people who was too flawless to let you linger on. He made you want to memorise as much of him as possible.

“When do you finish?” he asks, melodic voice peeling through Dan’s hope for invisibility.

He turns his face to look at him. “Four, but I have a ton of things to study after this,”

The sketching hand pauses in its creation of lines, but he didn’t say anything, and Dan can’t tell his expression from his bowed head.

“When do _you_ finish?” Dan asks.

They look up at him in surprise. “What?”

Dan waves his hands at the book in his hands. “Drawing. You’ve been here for two hours.”

He brow furrows in surprise “I _have_?”

He looks down at his page, tapping his pencil on his lips, forehead still scrunched up. He stares at it, and quickly adds something before ripping it away along the spiral binder, to Dan’s shock.  His fingers fold the piece of paper in half, and he tucks it into the front pocket of Dan’s apron.

“Finished,” he declares cryptically. He stands up, stretching his legs, bouncing up from the seat, wiggling his arms a little. Dan tries not to stare at the lean muscles on his arms. He shoves the sketchbook back in his bag, and spins around Dan, waving at him, and striding out the door with a cheery tinkle before he can even say anything in response.  

Dan gives a few baffled blinks in his direction, and looks at the little corner of paper sticking out of his apron. He wipes his hands on his legs, and takes it out, unfolding the creases made by the guy’s fingers. A pair of astonishingly intricate eyes stare back at him, shining with graphite. Under it, a line of words is written in a neat scrawl, and Dan almost drops the drawing onto the wet table.

_You have_ really _pretty eyes –Phil_

-

-  
  
After that, weekends felt a lot more energised, seasoned with a possibility that he would look up to hear the words ‘three sugars’, a chance that made Dan feel almost sick with nervous anticipation. It also, however, made him scrub the tables with renewed enthusiasm and answer customers with smiles that were slightly more authentic. The whispery giggles around Dan’s back held no complaints about that, but unbeknownst to Dan, they stopped tapping him on the back as he craned his head around the coffee machine, stifling their smirks in the haze of steaming milk instead.

Dan didn’t ever take the drawing out of his apron pocket. He had folded it back again after two solid minutes of gaping at it, and everyone had seen his bright red face and snickered. He could feel it, though, the tiny sliver of added stiffness to his apron that felt like it was constantly burning a square hole through to his jeans. Almost like a persistent reminder that wouldn’t stop swimming around through his mind.  
  
 _Phil_ , Dan thought. He mulled it over in his head, felt the way it curved around his tongue. It suited him, he thought. _Phil. Philip._ It sounded comfortable, like the kind of person that tipped buskers without fail, or offered to pay for the person in front of them. Someone too kind for their own personal good.

  
“Sounds like a cool person, right?” A familiar voice pierces through to him. Dan cringed inwardly, fingers faltering in their tapping on the counter next to him. He probably looked completely insane, whispering Phil’s name under his breath as he watched. Not that that assumption was far from the truth. Saying he felt mortified would be an understatement.  
  
“Always thought Phil was kinda boring though”, he says. “Hey Dan,”

“Phil.” The name felt good to finally say out loud, and Dan felt a small thrill at the small amount of added authority with the use of his name. The familiarity of the word was strangely warming. Didn’t change the fact that he was still impossibly awkward, though.

“So… coffee?”

If Dan was anyone but himself right now, he would’ve dragged himself away to a different continent with the amount of embarrassment he was buried himself under with his words. He wasn’t sure how much lamer he could get. Probably not by a lot.

Phil only laughed. Dan didn’t know how many more things he could find impossibly perfect about him, but apparently the list only grew every day.

“Guess I can’t come here just to see you, then,”

Well, shit. Wasn’t expecting _that_.

Dan stared at him, blood slowly creeping up his face, forgetting that he was supposed to talk.

Phil reached over the countertop and took his hand, which was resting on the surface limply. He smoothed it out, tracing the lines on Dan’s palm.

“Do you play anything?” he asks. Dan is too baffled to think about the consequences of telling Phil anything about his personal life.

“Um, piano. Guitar. Haven’t played in a while though, because uni’s taking up too much time. Not that I could fit anything in my dorm, because I can barely even sit on the floor.” Too much information. He was just spewing words everywhere, but Phil just nodded.

“Well,” he says, tipping coins into his hand and letting it go. It felt strangely cold after the absence of Phil’s fingers easing over his palm. “You know what I want.” He didn’t wink, but Dan was still left flustered, standing behind the table with a scattered mind and his entire body screaming after the suggestive lilt of his order.

Phil never came back to the counter for his order after adopting his previous position on the booth near the window, so his manager, lovely woman that she was, made him carry it out to him in a slightly overflowing mug instead of the takeaway cups that he was used to handling. For Dan, by not being the most coordinated of people, the teetering porcelain mug on the tiny fragile plate that skidded around and threatened to collapse everywhere only added to the stress of the five metre walk between him and Phil.

He finally set it down with a huff of relief, sliding it carefully towards Phil. He hummed with thanks, eyes not leaving his sketchbook. Dan took the chance to glance at him while he was working, without the pressure of eye contact.

His hair stuck up in the back, the kind of careful carelessness that was only crafted by rolling straight out of bed on a late morning, and his fringe was just short of falling into his eyes, splayed across his forehead. Dan wanted to reach over and sweep it aside for him. Not that he would ever be in a position where that was normal. It was only now that he really noticed now how pale he was. It wasn’t possible that anyone could avoid the outdoors more than he did, but it seemed like Phil came close, because the smooth skin in contrast to the inkiness of hair and Dan’s own mild honey coloured tint was given an almost see-through delicateness. Dan almost wanted to use that as an excuse to touch some part of him just to make sure he was real, and Phil wasn’t just some kind of translucent supernatural being conjured up by a tired brain.

He left before Phil could realise he was staring at him, though he doubted he would find it unusual due to the amount of time his eyes were spent observing Dan’s features. He didn’t dare look behind him, almost certain that a pair of bright blue eyes were watching him go.

Dan could almost forget Phil’s presence, the hours draining away like black coffee down the sink, as he continued to be in the same position for hours. He forgot to glance in his direction, under the assumption that he was just going to be there doing the same thing, so he slipped back into his usual mechanical working mindset. It wasn’t until one of the girls working with him, Louise, he thinks her name is, taps him on the shoulder with a piece of thick artist paper, that he realises he’s left. He takes it from her with a small thanks, and she giggles to herself slightly, pink tips of her hair bouncing in their barely contained curls.

He opens it, not knowing what to expect, and looks at Phil’s previous seat, which is empty.  When he looks back to the paper, his heart flutters a bit, chest fizzling with self conscious amazement. His hands have been traced with soft lead everywhere, hovering over piano keys and thumbing guitar strings. Drawn holding a coffee cup, curved around loose change, with the strings of his apron threaded through his fingers. Tiny pockets of detail spotted all over the page, catching habits even Dan wasn’t fully aware of. A tiny line of writing is written on the edge of the page, like it was too shy to let itself be seen. Dan squints at it, and feels the rest of his body bubble with heat.

_Maybe let me hold your hand some time… Call me?_

Dan glances behind his back, almost guiltily. This was dumb. He didn’t know Phil. Just because he was cute didn’t make anything less reckless. His hand ignores the running stream of thought, pulling out his phone anyway and tapping the scribbled number into the blank rectangle, not quite sure what he was going to to do with it.

Somewhere where he can’t see them, someone hands Louise a ten, rolling their eyes as she snatches it up gleefully.

Before he can think too much about it, Dan brushes his thumb over the save button, watching the number dissolve into the memory of his phone.

_Phil saved to contacts._

-

-

Dan lay on his tiny bed, phone burning through his thin t-shirt. He flung his arm sideways, the mattress cringing with the gesture. He picked up his phone, which hummed threateningly with overuse, and swept through his contacts, landing on Phil’s name, He groaned, dropping his phone onto his face so that the just-short-of-scalding warmth seeped through his skin. He wished it would keep going until it fried his brain so he wouldn’t have to think about Phil. That would be nice right now. Almost immediately, it started vibrating on his forehead, apparently increasingly eager to destroy his hopes. Dan snatched it back up, seeing the blue default icon looking back at him with its faceless smirk, ‘ _Phil_ ’ displayed innocently underneath it. Dan usually blessed technology with its internet and endless procrastination possibilities, but right now, with his stupid smartphone wiggling in his hand, he figured oversensitive touchscreens could get shoved up an ass.

He didn’t have time to even think _fuck it,_ before Phil’s voice is chiming through the phone with a cheery ‘hello?’

Dan almost presses the illuminated red button, before sighing, moving his finger over to the speaker button instead, and throws it onto the pillow next to his ear resignedly. “Hey,”

He could practically hear Phil’s face shift into the trademark smile as he shuffles around somewhere on the other end of the line.

“ _Dan,”_

His voice is too enthusiastic, he thinks. Especially for the someone like him, the vaguely awkward barista who wasn’t in any way special or spectacular. In fact, he had no plan towards this. He had no idea what to say. God, he was _so_ smooth. _Bad_ idea.

“Taking it that they gave you my thing?” he asks slyly.

Dan was so glad this was only a phonecall, because he could feel his entire face burning, and it wasn’t even because of his phone.

“Unless I stole your phone while you were absorbed in your sketching, I guess I did,” Surprisingly, he didn’t sound too attached to that piece of paper. A feat that he doesn’t understand how he’s capable, mind the fact that he’d carefully stowed it away in his apron after staring at it for five minutes, treating it as if it could disintegrate between his fingers at any time, hardly even bearing to crease it.

“What d’you think?” Dan could’ve imagined it, but he could almost hear a tiny bit of shyness in Phil’s voice.

“Not sure how anyone could spend that much time on one of my body parts, but you seemed to make it work.”

Phil burst into laughter, and Dan almost dried into a raisin when he re-thought what he had just said, brain collapsing in itself with embarrassment.  

“Oh… _uh_ ….not like that, oh my god _, fuck,”_

His pealing giggles continued through the phone, and Dan can’t help but think the sound was unjustly appealing, just the right amount of endearing over low puffs of attractiveness. He stays a flustered silent until Phil stops his snickering.

“Oh my god,” he gasps. “Didn’t expect that.”

He seems to compose himself slightly, but when he talks again, Dan can hear the amusement under his voice, making him seem so much easier to talk to, despite his mortification.

“There another reason for this call apart from unintended innuendos?”

Dan pushes a hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut, figuring if he couldn’t see anything he wouldn’t have to face his own embarrassment. “Actually,” he mutters “You should ask my forehead. It made the decision to press the call button”

“Brain-dial, huh?”  

The yellow light from the lamp next to him sends splotches of colour floating across his eyelids. “Sure,”

“Think its because you were thinking of me?”

Dan groans, not even making an effort to make it quiet.

“You can’t say I’m not right,” Phil teases.

“Doesn’t mean I have to admit to it.”

He wonders where his confidence is coming out of, because it definitely isn’t from his brain. That’s just a coughing mess of scrambled words and emotions. How he’s managing to come up with lines that make him sound barely intelligent is completely beyond him.

Phil laughs again, and even through the slightly staticky filter of his phone speakers, Dan’s heart jumps a bit at the sound. “What’re you doing now?”

He opens his eyes to look at the mottled white of the ceiling. “Nothing productive,”

“Do you wanna come somewhere with me?”

Dan raises his eyebrows, forgetting that Phil couldn’t see him. “It’s literally almost 9 at night and it’s two minutes into the first time I’ve ever called you”

“Are you going to sleep?”

“No, but I…” he looks at the tiny desk on the opposite end of the room, strewn with paper that he didn’t want to even think about rummaging through. He had reading to do. Dan can’t even remember if there was supposed to be an essay due in tomorrows class. He shouldn’t. He was only going to get a tiny amount of sleep as it was. Honestly, he didn’t really care.

“Do you even know where I am?”

“Nope,” he says, unperturbed.  Dan just sighs.

“Are all your dates this spontaneous?”

He can hear the smirk behind Phil’s voice in his ear. “Never said it was a date,” he says. “Would be honoured to take up the offer, though”

_Honestly_. “Just… meet me outside the coffee shop.”

“Demanding,” he laughs. Dan pressed his eyelids shut, wondering how someone with so much sugar in their system could possibly be so insufferable.

“Be there in five,” Phil declares, leaving him no room to back away.

“Uh, sure? Phil…”

His ‘bye’ expresses itself in the form of a resounding beep followed by a gleeful silence. Dan sighs, and shrugs on a hoodie, flicking off all the lights behind him as he wrestles the non-complying door shut.

-

-

Phil gets there before him, surprisingly, leaned against the passenger’s door of a dark blue car in his oddly bright colours and his skin luminescent. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about this, Dan thinks. Nothing poetic about meeting a boy under a sky polluted with neon lights and car exhaust. Except it was, kind of.

“Sup,”

Dan strolls his way into the scene over-casually. He can feel his future self wanting to crush himself through the memories.

Phil looks over as if it’s the first time seeing him, grinning widely. “You’re here,”

“Well I wasn’t gonna ditch, was I?”

“You might’ve. I’ve been waiting for a bit.”

Dan nudges his phone display on. “It’s literally only been 10 minutes”

“And I said I’d be here in five”

“You could’ve known I’d be here later if you weren’t in such a hurry to hang up”

Phil shrugs unapologetically, still smiling. “Priorities.”

“So where are you taking me?”

“Surprise.” He spins around and opens the car door with in over-used, over-dramatic gesture.

“Be my guest?”

He feels like staring at Phil is a lot more appropriate at this moment than giggling. Not, of course, that that was something he considered doing. “That’s the cheesiest thing I have heard in the last ten years,”

“Weird. I hate cheese.”

Dan just looks at him.

“I mean if you don’t _want_ to travel to an amazingly exotic place we can always stand here for the rest of the night. I figured you would want somewhere _away_ from your workplace considering you spend your entire weekend there so- “

He slips into the grey seat while Phil’s ranting, rolling his eyes.

“Just do your thing,”

Phil laughs, and closes the door on him, walking around the front of the car with a skip in his step.  

-

-

They pull up in front of a modern looking apartment, all whitewashed bricks and glass balconies. Phil twists the key away, stepping out of the tiny driver’s space with awkward practice. Dan, supposing this was the wild, ‘exotic’ place he was promised, clambered out in the cold air after him.

“This the special destination?” His breath mists in front of his face.

“Yup,” Phil says. “This is my place.”

Dan laughs. “You _literally_ took me home for a first date.”

“What can I say,” he smiles. “I’m a forward person.” He offers his hand to Dan, palm up.

“Coming?”

Dan raises his eyebrows at the hand. “I mean…you _could_ be a serial killer”

“I could be”

“This could be where you stack all your bodies”

A gust of wind blows through Phil’s messy fringe, whipping the carelessly constructed part out of place. “It’s possible”

Dan feels slightly dazed, and his mind shrugs, the thought _screw it_ floating across his head, in a state that he knows probably isn’t the most logical, and takes Phil’s outstretched hand. It’s smooth, and cold, but somehow radiates a heat which proves to be extremely hard to try and keep from creeping into his cheeks.

“I guess I’ll just trust my screaming abilities then”

Phil winks. “I know a couple of ways that’ll get you screaming”

The blood comes flooding into his face. “You’re _gross”_

“Yet you follow me into my apartment,”

Dan think he squeezes Phil’s fingers a little. “Don’t think I was ever the smartest kid”

The lift dings onto their floor.  

-

-

Dan’s almost sure Phil could never move out of this place and get away with it, considering the giant swirl of colourful mess that it was. He can’t imagine anyone else living here with the amount of _Phil_ plastered in the accidental dabs on the wall, and the lopsided canvas’ standing against any possible spare surfaces that weren’t covered with slightly bent sketchbook pages. It was kind of amazing, in an overwhelmingly intimate kind of way. Phil doesn’t do the whole, tripping-over-his-own-mess-while-apologising thing. Instead, he hops around the bits of plastic and newspaper and dubious liquid-filled mugs to get to a tiny glass topped table, snatching the book that he brought to the café that morning off the transparent surface. Bouncing on his toes through the path he just created, he comes back to Dan with it clutched in his hand, grinning.

“I would apologise for the mess, but I’m not actually going to do anything about it, so we’ll just pretend it’s not there.”

Dan stares around at the surroundings, longing to sweep his fingers over the walls. “No…it’s…nice.”

“Really?” Phil’s bright demeanour lilts with surprise, “you think so?”

“So much better than my dorm,” he says. “Plus, no bodies”

“Surprise surprise.” Phil beckons him away from the living room. “C’mon!!”

Dan follows him through the hallway. It’s not that big of an apartment, just a bathroom and two other doors that he presumes leads into bedrooms. The rest of the white-painted walls are relatively devoid of colour, and it makes him wonder if Phil ever lived with anyone. Doesn’t seem like it, considering the explosion of creation taking up most of the living space.

“What _are_ we doing?”

Phil opens one of the doors to his apartment, the wood flinging aside not unlike the curtains at some kind of show. That’s the way it seemed, anyway, with the flourished way Phil presented his bedroom.  

“Ta-da!!”

It looks like everything else that’s supposed to be in a house but got replaced with Phil’s art is crammed into this room, yet it somehow doesn’t look like a huge dump of a mess. There’s a bed shoved against the corner of the room, covered in a bright quilt patchworked with blues and greens and yellows. A small chest of drawers next to that, but that’s about the only ‘bedroom’ there is in the bedroom. A TV stands against the far wall, wires and cables forming a black tangled nest underneath the cabinet it stood on. Another shelf, a lot bigger than the one holding his clothes, is stacked neatly with rows of cases leaned against each other. Dan can feel his inner teenager squealing, itching to sit on the carpet floor and rifle through his collection and be a giant nerd again. Phil skids in front of the screen, inviting Dan to sit down next to him with a pat on the grey carpet, before reaching for a container clattering with plastic controls. He tosses one to him, Dan catching it with surprising finesse.

“You alright with this?”

Dan looks at him, face full of incredulousness, but really, wanting nothing more to just fold his too-long legs under himself and stay there for several hours.

“Did you…did you bring me here to play _Mario Kart_?”

He grins. “Among other things, but yes, if that’s what you want, then yes, yes I did,”

He pauses for a bit, almost like he only just realised what he was doing.  “Do you have important things to do? Because I don’t mind sending you back…”

Phil gets interrupted by Dan sinking cross legged into a red beanbag propped against the foot of his bed.

“Probably,” he says. “But I’m already here, right?”

Phil’s brief moment of indecisiveness vanishes, and throws the remote at Dan’s head, something Dan doesn’t take to with as much grace, lucking out as the black rectangle collides with the side of his head.

“Ow… _PhiL!!_ ”

Phil laughs, and Dan glares at him, intimidating factor lost in the soft edges of his eyes.

“Guests get first pick.”

-

-

The blinking white numbers at the bottom of the screen read 22:30, and Dan is hollering his victory again, Phil attacking him with more black plastic and Dan’s voice pitching higher whenever a corner is thrown into his chin with unnecessary force.

“I DIDN’T EXPECT YOU TO BE THIS GOOD,” he yells, sprawling with defeat over the floor.

Dan huffs, leaning back against the front of Phil’s bed. “I’m pretty amazing,” he says unapologetically. He dodges unsuccessfully when Phil’s hand tries to whack him on his knee.

“This was such a mistake,” he groans. “I’m being humiliated.”

“I don’t know,” Dan says. “Think its nice to have some kinda power over you for once,”

“ _Wrong,_ ” he complains. “You can go be powerful by yourself,”

Dan flicks back to the menu smugly, while Phil drags the notebook to him, complete with a half blunt pencil. As Dan presses his way around his character options, he touches the lead to the paper, leaving a faint grey dot in the paper as he presses the tip into it, contemplating where he wanted it to head.  He glanced sideways, at Dan, whose fingers are pressed against the knobs of his controller, with his lips slightly parted and stray tendrils of hair curling away from his fringe. The sleeves of a faded blue hoodie are pulled up to his elbows, and he can see the bright glinting of the colours floating on the surface of his eyes.

Quietly, the pencil starts to trail across the grains of the page, shaping lines around the tiny little bumps of sketch paper. The curve of an eyelid. The flow of that tiny curl against an ear. The smallest shadow of a dimple.

As Dan sat engrossed in the screen, Phil worked on the specks of reflection in his eyes, tongue between his lips and teeth as he shades his way through creases in his clothes. He doesn’t realise the silence of the room behind the animated yells from his speakers, can barely hear Dan’s little breaths from the lips he’s shaping under the tip of his pencil.

He doesn’t realise if Dan glances at him every several minutes and smiles a little before almost swerving off the pixelated road he’s on.

He also forgets that time was a thing, and when he finally lifts his head to take a breather and look how Dan’s going, is greeted by the accusatory zeroes of midnight.

“ _Crap,”_ he lets out of his teeth. “Dan,” he starts. “Why did you not tell me how late it was?”

The younger boy, stretched across the floor and rifling through several DVD cases, glances back at him sheepishly.

“It’s not that late,” he protests. “And you were busy,”

“So you decided to sit until it was a quarter to _one_?”

Dan rolls back into a sitting position. “To be fair, I wouldn’t even think about sleeping yet at this time if I was back at uni,”

Phil frowns.  “Literally how are you still alive”

He shrugs, leaning against the wooden board of Phil’s bed. “My own existentialism, I guess”

When his forehead didn’t unscrunch, Dan pats his knee reassuringly. “Don’t worry. Nobody cares if I stagger in at 4am in the morning,”

“ _I_ will,” Phil sighs. “I should boot you out,”

“If you do I’m not going to sleep, y’know,”

For someone that was so hesitant about coming in, his persistence was weirdly flattering.

“What’re you going to do here?”

His eyes glint with almost-success. “Watch a movie. Watch you fail at some more games. Watch you draw me. Watch you….”

Dan flushes slowly, his brain processing the fact that he just admitted to the fact that he found blatantly staring at Phil something that counted as a passably entertaining time killer.  

He almost expects that Phil would say something unbelievably lathered with confidence and suggestiveness, but he only looks down, smirking and huffing a bit so he was _almost_ giggling, but Dan wouldn’t ever believe he was. He slides the sketchbook into the tiny gap between the bed and wall, where it doesn’t fall to the irretrievable dust caked underneath it, but sits cosily sandwiched by the quilt.

“Can’t believe you’re like this,” he says.

“Permission to stay?” Dan asks, already knowing the answer but saying it anyway.

“I’m not saying yes,” Phil sighs. “Put the Lion King on and close the light or something.”

Dan does, riffling through the cases until he finds it. He contemplates keeping to the floor, until Phil just looks at him from his perch on his bed, and he heaves himself onto the springing mattress, surprise crossing over his face, but not giving any complaints.

As the familiar blue screen pulses to life onto the screen, Phil starts talking without facing him. “Tell me something interesting,” he asks. “Something about yourself you’d probably never tell me unless I asked.”

Dan side eyes Phil for a shred of expression. His gaze is fixed in front of him to the TV, but almost like he can tell that Dan’s looking him, his pupils flick in his direction in the smallest shift. He doesn’t know what Phil intends to achieve with the question, especially when ‘interesting’ doesn’t even cover the smallest wedge of his life.

“Well,” he attempts. “My middle name’s James. Daniel James Howell. Very generic.” The corner closest to Dan of Phil’s lips twitches upwards.

“Philip Michael” he says. “At least you don’t sound pretentious.”

Dan almost laughs at the though of Phil being called pretentious. He was a bit odd, yes. Sweet, probably. Uptight? Most definitely not.

“I’m probably the fifty third Daniel James in the UK,” he says. “Minus interest points for me”

“Well,” Phil says, turning his head in his direction. “You’re the first Daniel James for me, if that helps.”

There’s a pause where they appreciate the soundtrack that they’ve both probably heard at least five times. “What’s your favourite colour?” Phil asks.

“Hm?”

“Favourite colour,” he says. “I feel like you can only ever get branded as a friend if you know their favourite colour because it’s the first question anyone asks you. Plus, knowing people’s colours tells you a lot.”

Dan let a breath through his lips. “Hope you’re not disappointed by the fact that mine is black, then.”

The confession feels a while lot more personal in this context than if someone asked what colour pens he wanted. For some reason, he feels oddly insecure, too much of him exposed to be scrutinised. He tugs the sleeves of his hoodie down over the bare skin on his arms.

Phil hums in time to the tune of the song. “Not really,” he says. “Black isn’t that depressing, if you know where to use it,” he says. “It’s very bold.” He lapses to think, and watch the animated figures dance. “Most artworks start with black outlines. Not many people start off with hot pink or anything. Black is like…. A base for everything. It’s something you can come back to and use as a guide when there’s too many other elements confusing you and killing your steadiness.”

Dan stares at him, awestruck to a degree where he’s struck into a silence that he refuses to fill with his own words because they couldn’t possibly be able to match up to the depth or intelligence of its predecessors.

“Mine is blue,” Phil says. “Not sure how I can analyse that, unfortunately, considering it’s the choice of literally half the population.”

Dan could laugh at Phil’s underestimation of himself. “You’re not going to even mention how its part of the sky which spreads across the entire universe where everyone can see it? Nothing about its unwavering reliability or how it unifies literally any human being living on the Earth? Not going to mention how it’s the deep deep sea where no one could even imagine what could lie there?”

The smile blossoming across Phil’s face at this moment is probably the best Dan has seen yet. It spreads across his features, taking over his eyes and the glow of his blood under his cheeks, sincerity brushed over it, cockiness lost in his genuine pleasure, and hitting Dan with a force that cuts off his rant real quickly. “You sure you didn’t study the Arts?”

“Nope,” he says, semi-desperately trying to bring his voice down from it’s newly acquired squeakiness. “L..Law, actually.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Sounds intelligent.”

Dan groans, remembering his only motive for ever making that life choice. “Really the only point there is to it,” he mutters.

“You don’t like it?”

He lets the upbeat voices of a lion cub fill in the tense silence that follows before he speaks again. “Not really,” he whispers. If Phil hadn’t been especially listening out for it, he’d have missed it completely. He stays quiet, knowing Dan didn’t need prompting and would tell him what he wanted him to know.

“I don’t know where I’m going with it,” he continues miserably. “I hate every class there is to it, and nothing ever makes sense, and having to wake up everyday for the same shit course leaves me so unmotivated, and I don’t know why I continue.” he exhales, long and hard.

“I never liked doing anything like this back at high school,” he admits. “Guess finding some kind of legitimate direction for life, even if I didn’t believe it, would make me feel better because it made my parents think I was worth something.”

His soft voice turns scratchy. “Turns out they don’t care either way,” he says. “They wave me off this place and hey, no word in two semesters.”

His tone’s bitter, and Phil takes to it like he could physically feel the old needles of Dan’s past angers dig into him as well. He leans back, snagging the edge of his white pillow, and tucks it into his tensed arms, tapping his fingers across Dan’s balled up hands until he relaxed and Phil could weave them between his, and smooth sympathetic circles around the base of his thumb.

“This why you wanted to stay here so long?” Phil asks gently.

Dan looks up at him, smiling shyly over the top of the rectangle of soft fluff. “Probably.”

He buried the pillow under his chin. “I think this is the most fun I’ve ever had.” He leans into the space between Phil’s neck and shoulder. “You’re the most fun I’ve ever had.”

-

-

Dan squeezes out the tears blearing his eyesight into his sleeve as 3am blinks across the bottom bar of the screen, and names that he will probably never remember flash across the screen. His neck’s aching from being propped up on his hands for so long, and he’s pretty sure Phil dozed off somewhere halfway through the movie.

He taps him on the arm, curled around his legs. He blinks awake. “Dan.”

He laughs a bit. “Still me,” he says. “Think you should take me back now.”

Phil stretches out his legs. “What’s the time?”

“three sixteen.”

He rolls off his bed, standing up and looking very crumpled, hair completely done for. It’s funny. If Dan could take a picture of him right now, it’d probably be enough to get him through a couple of weeks of death inducing lectures.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Leggo”

Dan follows him, snickering slightly at his incoordination as he wanders out of the room. Even in shadowed absence of light, the half-finished works standing in the unfurnished living room still make him want to stop and absorb the talent surrounding him. He doesn’t, glancing briefly with a longing gaze, and lets himself be sleepily ushered out.

The winding hallways through the many apartments are completely silent, except for the sound of their feet as they pad across the floors. This time, Dan reaches for Phil’s hand, and he takes it without hesitation, the action almost subconscious. He doesn’t know how its possible to be so intimate when you’re walking through doubtful stained walls with your palms touching, but it is, the silence brimming with warmth.

When they walk out of the lobby, the gush of cool air stings the skin on his nose, and he presses closer to Phil as they head over to the car.

The air that envelops him inside is incredibly calming, full of the scent of Phil that is fresh crayons and liquid sugar. He presses the side of his forehead against the cool glass window, and waits for the engine to start, breathing as much of it in as possible so it swirls its way inside the folds of his memory before he has to leave.

-

-

When they do pull up in front of the gates, Dan glares at the rusty patterned metal with tired resignation. He turns to look at Phil, who’s drowsiness has all but disappeared. “Well,” he says.

“Well”

“I guess I should go,”

“Mmm,” Phil murmurs. He fixes Dan’s fringe, fingers brushing over his forehead. “You look like you’re never going to see me again,”

Dan can’t help thinking that this is where they kiss, because that’s what happens in all the shows and the movies, and he feels slightly queasy. His voice come out in a whisper that makes it seem like its almost afraid to disturb the silence in the middle of the night. “No one’s promised me I will.”

Phil laughs, and Dan almost forgot that the sound had that kind of effect on him. The kind that made his insides dissolve like sugar into coffee.

“I promise you,” he smiles, “that you will definitely see a lot more of my face after today,”

“Okay,” he sighs. “Bye?”

“See ya.”

Dan climbs out of the passenger seat, shutting the door behind him and looking at Phil through the tinted window. He saunters off, except with a stride that was more of an awkward than confident.  

Phil watches him clamber out, watches his tiny two fingered salute wave, and the way he trips over his too long legs. He doesn’t leave until he’s sure he doesn’t look back, which he does, several times. When he finally does leave his space on the grey curb, Dan’s a tiny loping sliver closer to the bare dots of pale yellow light still glowing in the university windows than his headlights.

-

-

When Dan falls into his room that night, he doesn’t even glance at the stack of paper on his desk, or the silent thrumming laptop. He doesn’t do anything but flip onto his back onto his tiny bed and stare through the darkness. He thinks back to when he was 15, and when things were sad, and how sometimes he tried to motivate himself to appreciate just one thing about that day. Eventually, he thought it was stupid, and the idea turned even more unattainable when he started university. But today, he thinks. Today, he could maybe keep to that rule.

He twists the blanket around his legs onto his side and for once, doesn’t dread what he has to face in four hours.

-

-

Walking into the café that Saturday feels slightly surreal. It’s the same, with the tentative trickle of people in the hours just before noon, and the chime of welcome tinkling. Except now, the pealing sounds less sadistic, and the apron around his neck doesn’t scratch at his skin.

He takes his place behind the counter, and Louise welcomes him with a smile and a hey. He smiles back at her, which she might’ve found unsettling, in a good kind of way, but he wouldn’t know.

Dan looks at the yellowed plastic covering the keys of the register, and he _knows_ Phil is there before he looks up and sees his face, hair flattened back into a fringe and jacket sleeves slipping back down from their creased position around his elbows. It’s so familiar it makes him let out a relieved sigh, before smiling and sticking out a hand.

“Latte with three sugars?”

The statement seems so comically simple now that Phil isn’t just that one cute customer that was oddly bright in more ways than one. His other hand rests on the seam of the pocket on his apron, feeling the edges of the folded up pieces of artwork.

Phil smirks. “Sure,” he says, tipping coins into his hand. “By the way,” He adds, outrageously flirtingly, “you look hot.”

Dan laughs at his absurdity, and Phil looks pleased with himself, and the whistle behind him could’ve been shaped by Louise’s lips or the coffee machine hooting its loud opinion, but he couldn’t care less because Phil was there, and he was making dumb attempts at being funny, and he can’t think of another time he’s been this close to really being happy.  

Phil leans over while he’s dispensing the coins into their compartments. “I’m not kidding,” he says. “Meet me after this?”

Dan only slides the drawer shut with a metallic clink, and turns a corner of his mouth up in a mystifying half dimpled smile, turning so his back was to him.

“Your coffee’ll be done in a bit,” he says over his shoulder.

Phil doesn’t know when the tired-eyed boy from his first visit turned into this Dan, but he decides the thawing of his eyes and colour in his cheeks is something he could appreciate.

-

-

Despite his coded body language, Dan does meet him after he hangs up his apron, and says bye to his co-workers. He leaves with Phil, exiting the shop and noticing the dimness of the sky, despite it only being 4pm, and the clear smell of rain threading through the air. He groans mentally.

“Is it gonna…” a drop of water hits his eyelid, and he blinks rapidly to get it out of his eyelashes. “If it’s…” Another one hits his upturned palm. “Oh my god.”

The drops start speckling the pavement, and the dots blur into a wetness that overlays the cement two shades darker than the normal grey. The clouds almost seem to bob down lower over his head as the droplets turn into rivulets and starts sticking his clothes to his skin. “ _Phil?”_ he yells. “ _WHERE_ is your _car??”_

Phil laughs through the water, hair stuck in random splays on his forehead, holding out his hand. “Ohm…C’mON!!”

They race across the street, thankfully clear of pedestrians that would’ve had their throats if they were speeding through them as haphazardly as they are now. Dan almost slips several times and would probably have knees rivalling those of a boy with a ball in first grade by the first ten seconds of running if it wasn’t for Phil pulling him along with a weird strength.

They stumble to the cars parked along the opposite street, and Phil has to let go of Dan to find his keys in his pocket, and they stand there dripping rain off their fingers and noses, and when the cars headlights flash with mocking amusement as Phil unlocks the doors, they clamber inside and they’re laughing and wheezing and everything is wet.

“ _God,”_ Dan gasps, after his lungs allows him form syllables. “Sweat,” he pants. “Sweat and rain is not a good combination.”

Phil just laughs, and tips his head back against the headrest, pulling the seatbelt over his chest. He starts driving, and Dan watches the rain on the windscreen well up and spill into one another like he used to do when he was a kid, and his childlike elation carries him through a high along the road to Phil’s apartment, and even then he’s rushing to the lobby through the pouring rain while Phil tries to cover himself unsuccessfully with his arms as he closes his car doors.

When they do finally tumble through to his apartment, trying not to drip too much onto the carpet and peeling their damp shoes off when they get off the lift, Phil goes to the bathroom, and comes back with a white towel that he wraps around Dan, standing somewhat sheepishly in the doorway.

When his hands come back around to Dan’s front, Phil holds the edges of the towel like the lapels of a coat, and his eyes are dancing just as much as his. He might’ve subtly tugged him closer to his own body, but he can’t tell, because half a moment after staring at Dan’s eyes, a hand is curved around his neck and his face is dragged down to Dan’s, who’s only a tiny bit shorter than him, but their lips meet in a messy sync anyway, warm giggles bouncing in between him and breath switched between the two mouths as its exhaled in happy, open movements against each other, and the towel is sliding off Dan’s shoulders and there’s no sappy soundtrack in the background except for Phil’s soft sighs and the shifting of fabric as Dan’s hands, cold from the water, slide under his shirt and splay onto his back. Somehow Phil’s now pressed against the wall near the door and they’re still kissing, and he traces the soft outline of Dan’s face with his hands like he would with a pencil, and his cheek is smooth under his fingers, and his hair is still slippery from rain as he runs his hands through it.

When they do pull apart, finally, their breaths having lost their short gasping in each other, Dan reaches forward and sweeps Phil’s wet hair away from his face, and he thinks back to when he first wanted to do that, and laughs again.  

“That’s okay?” Phil asks in a low murmur.

“Guess it is now.”

Phil retrieves the towel, and drapes it over Dan again. “We’re both going to get sick and sneeze all over each other.”  

“Too bad,” he grins. “It was fun.”

And he’s smiling, _really_ smiling, and there’s dimples in his cheeks, and they’re glowing through the pallor of his skin, and his eyes swirl with delight and the light is reflecting off them as they arc into radiant semi circles and Phil hasn’t ever seen anyone more beautiful than Dan, and Dan, and _Dan,_ and he wants to kiss him again, so he does, lips pressing against his head, his cheeks, the tip of his nose.

-

-

They’re lying on Phil’s bed, Dan in a t-shirt that got tossed to him after he peeled his own, still uncomfortably damp, one, off his back. Phil’s sketching again, but Dan doesn’t mind, because the soft scratching of the pencil proves to be an effectively calming background noise. He looks around at the walls of the bedroom, which, through grey light filtering in through the thin glass of the window, he can see is tacked with a dozen other mini masterpieces, some with splashes of colour, others a mess of scribbles that made no sense to Dan, but still looked so professionally done that he felt the familiar tugging of excitement he used to feel when he started to piece a piano cover together from a song.

“So if you bring anybody home,” he asks. “Do you automatically tug them to your bedroom?”

Phil looks up. “Why do you ask?”

Dan shrugs, or goes as close to it as he can with his hands folded under his head.  “I just assumed because I can’t see you loitering around your paintings in the living room whenever someone comes over when you always speed past it so quickly.”

“Oh,” he laughs. “No, I don’t bring them to the bedroom.”

“So…”

“Nobody ever spends more than 7 seconds on my paintings either. I figure that’s kind of a spoiler.”

“Spoiler?”

Phil hums, hand moving over his page again. “Yeah. They look so much more professional in magazines than sitting in this place in an embarrassingly awkward stage of unfinished.”

“Shit,” Dan says “You’re in magazines?”

“Mmhm,” he says. “Comes out monthly. I’ll let you know when the next issue is out.”

“Wow.”

“Gotta pay rent some way,” he says, smiling.  

“So if you don’t hang out in the living room either, then…. secret room I don’t know about?”

Phil grins, but it’s slightly more tense than his carefree beaming from before. “No secret chamber, sorry.”

A few moments pass.

“Don’t bring many people into this place, really.”

More silence.

“I’m not a people?”

“Apart from you.”

Dan pulls himself into a sitting position, the effort making him huff, and he blinks at Phil, uncomprehendingly. “How….”

Phil shuts the cover of his book. “I’m pretty introverted,”

“But you….”

“It felt different for you,” he says. “Felt like knowing you couldn’t possibly turn into a chore.”

Dan’s astounded. “But..I….”

Phil leans close to him, rocking on his butt and pressing his arms onto his crossed legs for balance. “Don’t you dare say you’re not special,” he says.

“But..I was quiet, and so awkward….”

“No.” Phil drops a light kiss onto the top of his head. “You were amazing.”

“No I _wasn’t,”_

“Wrong.”

“You’re ridiculous”

“And you’re extraordinary”

Dan throws Phil’s own pillow at his face. “Unbelievable.”

“I agree.”

Dan drags Phil down over him, and decides its his turn to pepper his hair with kisses.

-

-

Phil didn’t have that many friends that he kept from uni, but that was probably his fault considering how terrible he was at catching up and going to reunions, or communicating in general, really.  

PJ was a cinematography major, producing films that always astounded Phil with their creativity. He hadn’t ever really grasped how he turned a tiny idea into a full blown production that looked stunning on camera, just as Peej had never gotten how Phil could spend so many hours just standing in one position and having only have drawn a series of indecipherable shapes onto an irritatingly empty canvas. He was itching with energy, and Phil was always content to tag along with him wherever he went and let himself be directed into whatever role he wanted him in. He also made an excellent soundboard though, despite his distinct aversion to stillness. He could always just stop and listen, and always provided his own view because he wasn’t the kind of person that just lent an ear and sighed, even though sometimes, Phil thought that could probably be a better approach.

He felt like it was about time they met up again and just let them stream their lives to each other before they split too far apart to make any kind of sense anymore.

“So, where we headed?” PJ asks. His voice has always been of a low, measured tendency, despite his constant excitement. Phil had always felt like it was calming.

“No idea, really,” he replies. “Thought I’d just come out and update you on some things.”

“Hm,” PJ contemplates their surroundings. “The chocolate café?”

Phil grinned. The chocolate café was always their default meeting place back when Phil found parties too exhausting or exams had crushed him beyond sanity. It held some nice memories. “Couldn’t be better.”

The place is so different to the place where Dan works, yet it still reminds him of him, the richness of the aroma in the place making him feel slightly guilty for betraying the tiny café which he went normally.

They slip into one of the two seater tables, the kind that couples bonded over by feeding each other chocolate drizzled whipped cream. After they smile at the waitress and tell them their orders, PJ sets his elbows on the table, and obstinate green eyes fix their gaze on his determinedly. “So,” he starts. “What’s up?”

Phil laughs at his bluntness. He’d missed these conversations. “Where do you want to start?”

Peej’s eyes narrow just the slightest millimetre. “I can _tell_ there’s something this whole meeting is based around. Might as well just spill it.”

“Alright,” Phil says. “I met a boy.”

PJ snickers, serious façade completely sliding off as his arms relax and push the curls from his fringe back to his hairline before letting them spring back again. “Of course you did.” He sighs, as if mentally preparing himself. “Well, who is he?” His hands clasp together in the centre of the table, anticipating the probably very long rant. “What’s the story?”

Phil lets a breath out before he starts. “His name’s Dan,” he says. “And he’s really….” He pauses to find a word. “He’s….”

He can _see_ PJ physically trying not to burst out laughing. “ _stop,_ ” he protests weakly. Peej puts his hands up in surrender. “He’s cute,” he allows.

“Sure he is”

“I’m _serious,”_ Phil persists. “He’s got the nicest smile, and nice hands, and he has dimples and his eyes are so pretty and everything he says makes me laugh, and…. Are you recording this?”

“Not unless I wanted to script the most generic rom-com,” PJ smirks. “You’re smitten.”

“Think I am.” He didn’t even ask it as a question, just throws the statement out there like he couldn’t care less about admitting the fact anymore.

PJ wiggles two fingers on his hand. “So you two together, or….?”

Phil shrugs. “I don’t really know.”

“’It’s complicated’, huh?”

“You are not using a thirteen-year-old’s facebook status to describe my inner turmoil.”

PJ rolls his eyes. “Have you heard yourself? You literally sound no more than 12. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

He blows through his mouth in an exasperated sigh and takes a grateful sip from the frothy mocha delivered to him by a different waitress. “I don’t know,” he attempts again. “He’s been to my place a couple of times, and he likes me, I think.”

The guy looks impressed. “Your place? Even I haven’t been there in like, what, five months?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that?”

Peej waves him off. “I know you’re not. Don’t worry about it.” The sly glint in his eyes made its way back into his expression. “So how far have you gone with him?”

He groans at the question. “You’re sick,”

“Nope,” he defends. “Just curious.”

“We’ve kissed. A bit.” He hides his face quickly behind his mug of coffee, refusing to look at PJ’s deviously raised eyebrows.

“Likes you, huh?”

Phil’s shoulders rose and fell. “Maybe? Probably? It’s possible.” He doesn’t say anything about the multiple pictures of him he has of Dan’s depicted hands and hair. That was irrelevant.

“Well,” PJ says. “Let me know when you’re engaged.”

Phil glares at him, refusing to splutter and spit his overpriced chocolate coffee everywhere. He swallows, probably too fast, because his throat protests and he almost chokes. “I used to think you were good at advice.”

Peej yawns. “I am. You just don’t need it.”

He decides that’s probably the ending point of that conversation.

-

-

The wind blows the heavy chocolate aroma away from their faces when they step outside, and Phil almost immediately wants to turn back into the warmth of the comfort of the air inside the place. Nevertheless, he follows PJ, fingers scrunched up inside his pockets.

  
“How’s your work coming along?” he asks PJ, because that’s what functional adults talked about, and that’s what they were. Functional Adults. Mm.

PJ grins. “It’s really good, actually. I’m working with one of my Dad’s old friends, and I’m helping him produce a couple of short films for this YouTube site. It’s fun.”

“Sounds like it,” Phil says. “Well, if you ever need a volunteer to plaster wet newspaper all over their face, you know where to look.”

PJ laughs. “I appreciate your sacrifices.” They walk a bit in cool silence, probably one where he was expectantly waiting for a reciprocated answer, but none came, so he ended up asking anyways. “You?”

Phil shrugs. “It’s good enough. I paint n draw for this magazine. Might need to invest in something else for a bit though, because money’s a bit…”

He waves his hand vaguely. “Might have to get a roommate to help with rent,”

PJ looks surprised. “You…. want to live with someone?”

“Might have to,”

“But…. you hate people watching you work.”

Phil sighs. “Yeah, because they always ask too many questions and I don’t know how to answer them and most people don’t _get_ how I work. I don’t know. I’ll find a way.”

PJ looks concerned. “D’you want help finding someone? I know a couple of people that could be decent.”

He shakes his head. “It’s ‘k. Don’t really want to start looking now. I’ll let you know if you can help.”

They leave each other on the end of the street, promising to call and heading their separate ways. Phil starts his engine, slumping down in his car seat, trying to think of what to do. He slides back up the grey fabric, gripping the steering wheel, and decides the topic could be ignored for another couple of months.

-

-

Hell could easily be this room, Dan thinks. Forget burning lava, and floors made with jagged glass, or poisonous lakes. He’d gladly jump into a river of gagging liquid than keep awake in this place, where the back of his chair was constantly rubbing uncomfortably against his shirt and his collar was itchy whatever position he was in and there was gum under the table and his pens kept falling off the too-tiny table. Yet again, he wonders why he could’ve entertained the idea that _law,_ of all fucking courses, could be _remotely_ interesting. He didn’t care about property or prosecution or solving other people’s problems when his own inner mess was churning around his head and no amount of tiny text written in Times New Roman could solve it. He tries not to groan too loudly, but his irritated exhale still makes the brunette next to him glare condescendingly through her steely eyes. He only sinks further into his shirt, eyes sliding half shut.

The heavy silence, only interrupted with the vaguely distanced drone of the professor he still doesn’t know the name of, slows into a thick syrupy weight on his brain, and he fights to keep his eyelids slipping downwards any more.

The words on the stapled stack of paper on his table focus in and out, making no sense, and he absentmindedly doodles around them, letting his pen wander in formless squiggles around the paragraphs. He thinks of Phil, with his beautifully washed canvases, and the boldness of his charcoal lines.

Must be nice, he thinks. The quiet of an uninterrupted space where you could just let ideas flow and do what you love for a living, with no one cramping your way of life. That would be good. No wonder Phil always seemed so bright. He subconsciously draws a smiley face onto the corner of his paper as he thinks of lying on Phil’s bed, holding Phil’s hand, talking to Phil. Soon enough, his mind is running with snippets of conversations and photographs stored in his brain, taken through his eyes. The girl next to him looks at him grinning dreamily at his table, and she rolls her eyes, refusing to try and decipher wherever the hell his brain was.

-

-

Dan bursts through to the fresh air, breathing it in like he had been deprived for several hours. He reaches for his phone, disgruntledly silent through the lecture. It doesn’t take very long to scroll down to P, and he smudges his finger over the only contact under the letter, holding it up to the side of his face, cradling it in his hand

It only takes him two rings before Phil picks up, smile in his voice. “Dan?”

“Are you doing anything?”

“I’m actually heading down the elevator right now because I’m assuming you want to picked up”

“Thanks,” he sighs.

Phil’s chuckle echoes through the phone right before he hangs up.

-

-

Dan’s fingers are tapping restlessly against his thigh as he stares resolutely down the road, waiting for the blue of Phil’s car to turn around the corner, and it seems too long of a time, and he feels awkward, just standing there while the rest of the uni students mill around in their cliques. He’s not blending in enough, stiffly leaned against a pole with no one to act as a social prop. It was uncomfortable, the kind of uneasiness that he got from too much attention from too many people.

A pair of arms circles around his waist, settling on his hips as someone places a chin on his shoulder. “Hey,” Phil says, and the flustered heat that travels through him does a lot to soothe the edges that stuck out in his discomfort, pressing them down back into their sleek order. He breathes out in a relaxed exhale, before twisting around to brush his nose against Phil’s cheek. “Where did you come from?”

“My mum”

Dan shoves his chest, rolling his eyes. “Shut up _,”_

“I’m not _wrong”_

Dan untangles himself from Phil, keeping their fingers linked. “Where we going today?”

“Don’t you ever have work to do?”

He yawns into the material of Phil’s shirt. “Yes”

“Don’t want to do anything, huh?”

Dan muffles his annoyed grunt into his shoulder, and refuses to answer the question. Phil laughs.

“Alright. C’mon”

They walk towards the opposite street, which would explain how Phil got there without Dan noticing. Their hands swing in between each other, a rhythm that Dan feels like might belong better within a mother and a five-year-old, but he doesn’t care, letting his hand be carried through with Phil’s with the kid-like pace.

-

-

They don’t pull up to Phil’s apartment. Instead, when Dan looks out the window, he has no idea where they were, which was strange, because who doesn’t know that they live near a giant sprawling oval of grass? He runs his hands over the twists of the wire fence around it, posters peeling off from the loose, bent bits of wire. It was the kind of place people came for respectable Sunday picnics, a bicycle lane winding its way around the borders of the place, relatively new playground situated in a corner and bare of greasy handed children. Wasn’t that surprising, considering most of them were probably throwing tantrums over maths.

He looks back at Phil, wondering what kind of motive could’ve brought them here. The person in question was bent over the trunk, rifling for something under the debris. He tosses Dan’s bag to him, retrieving yet another slim black book, brushing bits of newspaper off its cover. Phil lets the door fall shut and locks it, headlights clicking meekly.

“Thought I could do with some outside air,” he says. “I don’t get out that much, plus I have to work on my landscapes.” Dan tries to read his face, but his expression is completely passive, so he slings his bag over his shoulder. Maybe the grass would be a better companion to his stifling dorm and he could actually get work done. Besides, Phil was there, and that was enough for him, really.

They settle under a tree, Dan lying halfway between the shade and the sun so the rays glint off the silver zips on his shoes. He watches Phil unpack, setting up his pad on his knees and staring ahead for a while. It was strangely fascinating to watch, considering he was literally only just staring at a guy staring at other things, but something in the way that Phil concentrated with his tongue between his teeth and shifted his leg to make the angle of his pencil work, was hypnotising.

He sighs, and pulls out his own contents. A book heavy with knowledge he didn’t want to absorb, several leaflets of paper with lines he never wanted to fill. He groans inaudibly, and promptly drops them onto his face, hoping that maybe the wind would blow it away and he would never have to deal with it ever again.

Phil looks back at him with sheets on his face and a textbook splayed on his chest, and he twinges with sympathy. “Dan,” he whispers. A hand reaches up to move the debris off his eyes. “Yeah?”

Phil crosses his legs under him, discarding the drawings next to him. There wasn’t much here anyway, and there was a much more interesting scene that probably needed his attention more than a couple of trees. He could always come back in fall. That was a lot more colourful.

“Why do you keep up with your law course if you hate it so much?”

Dan sighs, again, long-suffering, and he sits up, paper fluttering away from him as he emerges from his own created pile of unwanted crap.

“I don’t know,” he says, looking dejected and tired, and _god_ why does he do this to himself. Phil doesn’t want to probe anymore than Dan wants to share, though the expression on his face does makes him want to gather him up and press a kiss to his temple, maybe. He stays put, waiting, and Dan doesn’t mind the silence, knowing somehow that its his to fill.

He rips out a few blades of grass underneath his foot, shredding the roots.

“Back in high school, I loved English, I guess. And people with good grades in English went into law. That’s just the way it was. It paid well, it made you look good, and my marks were okay for it, so everyone told me to take the chance.” He lets the grass float back down, wiping the dirt off his hands on his jeans.

“But I only survived in English because Drama was my life, but nobody’s an actor. Nobody does that. You don’t just spring from high school with a dream that a five-year-old might believe. It doesn’t happen.”

Phil fiddled with the pencil in his hands, watching the boy carefully.

“So I settle for the next best thing, but this isn’t what I want, _ugh._ I liked making worlds of my own and dreaming up people and writing essays about what I liked to believe and actually felt a thing for, but this? It’s gross. Everything’s laid out for you. You follow the rules set by someone else and you get told what you need to believe and everything’s disgusting because its not what I thought it would be and thinking about doing it my entire life makes me want to scream. Law can go fuck itself.”

He looks small, even with the small satisfaction of saying that last statement, so Phil does scoot over now, wrapping his arms around him and pressing a soft kiss to the end of his fringe.

“M’sorry,” he murmurs. “I think you’d be amazing with your words and your worlds.”

Dan smiles, like he always does with Phil. “Yeah?”

Phil rests his head on his back. “I know someone that works in film, and he always needs extras to help around. I’ll let him know about you. Sounds like his YouTube thing might be interesting for you.”

Dan kisses his cheek, feeling emotional to the point where he felt a bit detached, wondering, again, how this one person could make his day infinitely better with his paint stained fingers and a smile. “Thank you”

He has a thought, though, and he tells it to Phil, pulling away from him slightly. “Did you really come here to practise landscapes, though?”

Phil grins sheepishly. “Well, yeah. I was planning on it. I brought you along because you would probably be happier here than there but that obviously means I can’t concentrate, because you’re incredibly interesting and I can’t take my eyes off you.”

Dan tackles him to the ground and kisses him, probably not the the best idea because any middle aged lady could walk by with her dog and see two boys making out, and ants were probably climbing up their shirts, but he didn’t care. And the fact that he didn’t care made him more free than he had felt in a long time.

-

-

The next time Dan’s at Phil’s apartment, he doesn’t hurry past, and Phil doesn’t push him away from the doorway either. He fusses with his keys, dropping them and picking them up again, placing them on the counter. Dan looks at him, and at the unfinished artworks, and when Phil still doesn’t look up at him, ventures into the midst of them.

He doesn’t dare to touch them, scared that he might make the delicate works crumble. They’re gentle, he thinks. Soft colours and undefined lines. Not up in your face, but making their impressions all the same.

Meanwhile, Phil looks at Dan wandering his eyes over his art, strangely calm about it, and lets him. He doesn’t stop him as his fingers trace the frame of the canvas, doesn’t call out when his hip comes dangerously close to an easel. He props an elbow against the counter, and watches the awestruck expression on his face, and feels a sense of pride that he hadn’t been hit with in a long while.

Finally, Dan turns back to glance at Phil, and is met by a pair of observant eyes, shining with what could’ve been amusement. Phil gives him a small smile.

“What do you think, hm?”

Dan looks sheepish, catching at his lip with his teeth, swiping at it with his tongue. “Sorry about that…thought I was only going to be a couple of seconds, but,” he pauses, looking behind him. “They’re…”  he thinks for a few seconds, hand floating upwards as if wanting to touch and experience the painting in somehow even more intimate ways than was physically possible “They’re beautiful.”

“Well,” Phil laughs quietly. “I can think of more beautiful things in this room.”

Dan ducks his head slightly, corners of his mouth turning up slightly. He looks at Phil through the falling strands of his fringe and eyelashes. “Mm?”

“Mmhm.” Phil steps so close to Dan that he can feel the breath exhaled from his nose blow over his chin. “Guess what it is”

“No idea,” he said, circling his arms around Phil’s torso and tilting his head back up. “Think you have to show me.”

Phil swings his arm so Dan was up against the wall, leaned between the space between his arms. He nudges his cheek with his thumb, feeling him vibrate slightly under him. “Would kissing you be a good enough clue?”

Dan goes up onto his toes, sliding up along the one bare spot on the wall to stare levelly into Phil’s eyes, a mixture of colours that fit together better than any palette-concocted combination. “Possibly.”

So Phil leans down and catches Dan’s lips with his own, feeling the curve of a smirk under his actions. He presses against them, nudging at them until they opened and he slips his tongue inside. Phil brings his hands up to Dan’s shoulders while he was still anchored to his hips, Dan sighing into his mouth, shifting so that he pulls Phil even closer to his chest. Phil moves from his place fitted with Dan’s mouth, curving lower to mouth at his neck.

Dan makes a small surprised noise that sounded more like a squeak than anything. Phil giggles with satisfaction, the vibrations only making Dan want to jerk away, legs weakened below him, his body only being held up by Phil’s arms. He licks the spot experimentally, the warmth of his saliva making Dan’s mind frame collapse within itself so the only thing left in his brain were incomprehensible particles of want zipping around in his head, his skull feeling oddly light. Phil sucks lightly, experimentally, and an embarrassingly uncontrollable moan escapes his mouth, his hands grasping at bunches of Phil’s shirt off his back.

Phil works his mouth over the mark until he pulls away, satisfied with the smudge of purple left on Dan’s pale skin. Dan gasps, pulling Phil’s head back up to crush his lips against him, significantly messier and more urgent than the slow pull they started off on. He rolls his hips against Phil, gripping his face in his hands. Phil obliges to the whimpering half-silent pleas, running his hands over Dan’s sides as he kisses the boy through whatever functioning senses he had left.

His fingers find their way under the hem of Dan’s shirt, and he muffles a cry into Phil’s shoulder, back curving into the shape of his body. He pulls the fabric over Dan’s head, the bare skin shivering in response to Phil’s cool touch. He trails his hands over his chest. “You’re definitely,” he presses light kisses to the edges of his collarbones, Dan’s breath coming out in small huffs. “You’re definitely the most beautiful thing in this room.”

Phil moves his lips over the dip between his shoulder blades, nipping at the pale skin, sweeping his thumb over the small bump of Dan’s nipple. He gasps, combing through Phil’s hair with frustrated energy, tugging at the knots and dragging the locks out of their carefully constructed arrangement.

“ _Please,_ ” Dan moaned. “Phil, _don’t,”_

“Don’t what, babe?”

“ _One,_ “ he pants. “Don’t call me babe.” Dan’s hands clench in Phil’s hair as his mouth tests the sensitive nub. “ _Two.”_ his voice struggles to stay level. “Get to my fucking dick already, oh my, _ah_ , fucking _god_.”

“Patience,” Phil breathes against his skin. “I’m an artist, y’know.”

Dan groans. “ _And?”_

“And,” Phil hums. “I have the best canvas in the entire world at the moment.” He splays his palms onto Dan’s body, tugging the low-hanging jeans off. He bobs back up to Dan’s ear, and whispers. “I’m not about to waste it.”

With that, he falls to his knees, hooking his fingers under the elastic band of his grey boxers. Phil teases them down slowly, and Dan only throws his head back helplessly, nails finding nothing on the wall to hang onto, cock lying stiffly against his stomach, untouched. Phil grips his thighs, and Dan lets out another strangled breath, the fingerprints on his skin so close to where he needed it the most that it emblazons across the fair surface in a fiery path of sweet torture.

Phil brings his kisses over Dan’s lower stomach, over his upper and inner thighs, leaving different shades of red all over his body. Above him, Dan watches him with wide eyes and cheeks flaring a dark pink, sweat curling the ends of his hair into tiny waves of brown. He watches Phil’s long lashes lowered over the bright blue eyes, watches how the remnants of old paint imprinted onto his skin glides across his own.

When Phil finally takes him into his hands, Dan sucks in a breath so hard Phil notices the hollow it forms in his middle. He smirks, looking up at his clenched eyes and teeth, and pulls his hand over it, pumping it twice to test his reaction. The blood rushes to Dan’s already heated face, turning the tips of his ears and nose red. Dan moans his name, a mess of sensation, and he feels his own blood rush downwards at the wrecked sound.

“ _Please,_ ” he pleads. “ _Please, Phil.”_

Phil touches his lips to the head of Dan’s cock, and covers the length with his mouth, enveloping Dan with a blissfully wet heat, and he almost collapses with relief. His hands, usually so cold, surround him with warmth, his blessed tongue moving in long, languid strokes. Phil’s fingers move in sync with his mouth, following the movements of his head. Dan pushes forward, thrusting into it as he struggled to catch his breath in the hazy cloud of pleasure.  

“ _Please,”_ he pants. _“Please,_ I _, oh god_ , I’m going to…”

Phil looks at the mess of a boy above him, and smiles in satisfaction, increasing his pace as Dan’s sounds became louder, gasps turning into drawn out groans, panting becoming quicker with each second, until Phil feels the final rush of liquid over his tongue, and he slides his mouth back off, hand pumping the rest of the fluid out in its sporadic streams, Dan’s nails scraping against the plaster behind him.

Dan slumps down, exhausted and bleary minded, and looks at him, eyes daring as they flick down his body. He reaches over, palming the front of Phil’s pants, a visible bulge growing under his hand. Dan thrust his hand under it, cupping his dick within his pants, and strokes it with confident, sure motions. Phil, already turned on from getting Dan off, feels the pressure build until he was breathing just as hard as Dan, falling backwards onto the floor as moisture spills through his fingers and blooms across the front of his boxers.

“ _God,”_ he says quietly.

Dan, too tired to move, gives a weak smile. “Yeah.” His neck was decorated with marks made by Phil, chest dotted with the same kind of alluring bruises. Phil looks over them in wonder.

“I take it back,” he murmurs. “You.” He kisses the top of Dan’s head. “Are the most beautiful being in the whole of the universe.”

-

-

Dan arranges the week old magazines on the corner table, tucking the ripped pages back inside their covers just for something to do. Business was slow today, a pleasant contrast to his usual working hours. He flicks through them, making sure there wasn’t anyone standing at the counter impatiently. He wondered how journalists continued to find so much information about people who seemed like they weren’t ever seen outside of their roles in movies, or glittering under hundreds of flashing cameras. How did they know if someone was pregnant, or if some couple broke up, or who was destined to leave the band? What was it like, having your face plastered all over pages that hundreds of people read everyday, full of facts that didn’t make any kind of sense? Dan almost snorts at himself, setting the pages down, wandering back behind the counter to collect the new stock that Louise had bought, stored under the surface of the ceramic top. He wasn’t nearly interesting enough to even consider that thought.

The glossy covers glint against the battered arrogantly, but he knows it won’t be long before they’re ‘accidentally’ stained with coffee, smooth leaves pressed with cake crumbs.

One of the stapled leaflets of gleaming paper catches his eye, cover devoid of the bold yellow headlines and fuzzy pictures of scandal, title written in a flowing, hand-done font. Under it, the print of a wire sculpture constructed into the shape of a silvery deer stands across the minimalistic front. He flips it open, the contents similar in layout, artworks printed proudly over it, most styled in the contemporary form that had pastel teenagers sigh with contentment. The kind of look which went with contemplative nods next to seasonal drinks. The aesthetic, Dan thinks, that revolved around people like Phil. He flicks through it, mentally reminding himself to look through it more closely as he catches sight of a girl entering through the tinkling door. As soon as he sets it down, however, the back cover lies open to Dan, and he snatches it back up, eyes widening.

At first glance, it could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been mistaken for some other random male with a fringe. But it wasn’t, every morning glance in the mirror told him that. Washed with pale grey watercolour, and intent eyes below a ruffled fringe outlined in black ink, bleeding lines of darkness sweeping over the shadows that they cast, lines of light carved into the dimness. The tiny italics under it rippled before his eyes, and he shoves the magazine into his apron pocket, next to the old pieces of paper that Phil had left him so long ago, scrambling to get back to the counter. He knew Phil _drew,_ but oh _god_.

_no, I’m not disappointed by black. –Philip Lester (2015)_

_-_

_-_

By this time, their routine was seamless. Pick up the phone, and by two rings Phil laughed down the line and minutes later stood with a smug smile in the doorway of the café or the gates of the uni dorm, once with a bunch of flowers that left everyone in a ten metre radius either in giggles or coos, both of which did nothing to pump the blood back down from his face. Even if he did threaten to stab Phil with the thorns if he tried pulling the stunt again, they sat in a hastily bought vase on his desk, and the petals falling from the stems covered the work he was constantly meant to be doing, so he didn’t mind that much. They seemed to like the dingy sunlight more than he did.

He meets Phil out on the worn down doormat, the word ‘welcome’ spiralling across it in frayed bold letters, and he takes his hand, not caring who saw.

“I got a surprise for you,” he says.

Dan pretends to be surprised, magazine rolled up in the bag slung over his shoulder poking almost accusingly into his side.

“Mmhm?”

He nods enthusiastically, pulling him to his car. Dan smiles, albeit hesitantly, but a smile nonetheless.

-

-

Phil bounces onto his bed, springing onto his pillow and reaching under it, bobbing back up with the exact magazine from earlier in the morning clutched in his hands. He hands it to Dan.

“I promised you that I’d get you a copy of the next issue,” he says, eyes dancing in excitement. Dan, looking at the man’s prancing irises and proud glow, couldn’t bear to tell him that he’d seen it before. He flips through the pages, peeling each artwork aside like he’d never noticed them before, like he didn’t know what was on the last page. He pretends he can’t glimpse Phil practically vibrating next to him, perched near his shoulder until he laboriously made his way to the end.

“Look at the back cover,” he says eagerly. Dan flips it over, knowing what was coming but his breath leaving him in an amazed puff anyway. The start of a tiny smile wraps around his lips.

“Do you like it?”

Dan looks over his shoulder at the eyes watching semi-anxiously for his reaction. He laughs, and pulls out the paper in his bag.

“Even more since I’ve seen it twice.”

Phil’s eyes widen and he turns the subtlest shade of red. “You’ve…oh.”

“Phil,” Dan says. “It’s amazing. I don’t…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t expect for my face to be published anywhere, and really, I’m flattered, but you have so many other things that would look infinitely better and, _oh my god,_ I sound like an ungrateful shit but if its for me, I don’t deserve…”

His falling face doesn’t brighten at his words, but understanding dawns in his eyes and the blue almost disappears in the obstinate grey filtering through. Phil opens his mouth several times, clamping his lips shut as he tries to word his thoughts into something comprehendible.

“I think you’re part of my life now,” he blurts, and when Dan looks taken aback, quickly backtracks. “What I mean is… yeah, I wanted you to like it, but it wasn’t just for that, because you’ve just come into my existence and you’ve made it so much better and my art is something that reflects everything that my life gives me. You’re something that has already had a giant impact on what I do, and? And I want to remember you as someone important and that’s what my art does for me. Maybe you don’t get that but…man, I’m probably not making any kind of sense.”

Phil looks up, expecting a baffled Dan, but he’s met by a boy who’s smiling and cheeks that are flushed with warmth. He reaches his arms around Phil, and lays his head on his shoulder, breathing in the smell that was _Phil,_ and not knowing how possibly he had survived without the scent of pastel and sweetness so integrated in what he knew was _home._

“You do,” he murmurs. “You make so much sense, god” Dan brings his head up o look Phil in the eye. “How’d someone as amazing as you land in my life?”

He leans forward to press his lips against Phil’s, who happily, if not a bit surprised, reciprocates, sighing into it. “I should be asking you that question.”

“You’re gross,” Dan mumbles, burying his hands in Phil’s pockets.

“But I’m yours,” Phil giggles.

He hummed against his neck, winding his fingers between Dan’s.

“Move in with me,” he says quietly, whispering it into his ear. Dan, feeling the movement from his lips amplified tenfold against his soft skin and feeling like his entire being had been pooled into a molten puddle of sugar, only gasped quietly, not quite registering what he said.

“But,” he breathes half-heartedly. “You’re painting here.”

Phil laughed quietly against the skin of his ear. “And, what, you think I’m going to kill you in your sleep with a paintbrush?”

He looked at Dan’s eyes, whose pupils are wide and glow in the way that only unfiltered happiness can manage, dark coffee glistening as he tries to hide the smile breaking through his face. “Don’t you trust me?”

“That’s _not_ it, I’m just…how do I fit in all this? Your life, your mind, your _living room?”_

The blue in Phil’s eyes coalesce into a single colour that stared Dan down with brightness that he couldn’t deny, even if he wanted to. “You’ll fit in. I’ll make you”

“Yeah, but … I… I just gotta…”

“Mmm?” Phil prompts, moving his lips over his neck again.

“I gotta… stop _distracting me,_ ” he mutters, pushing away Phil’s head, not at all like he means it.

Phil laughs and backs away from his neck, leaning away slightly with his hand still twined in Dan’s. “Easier said than done,” he says. “Well?”

Dan groaned. “Would you let me back out of this place if I said no?”

Phil’s features beamed at him, dazzling smile catching Dan’s breath. “I guess you won’t find out unless you do.” He smooths a thumb over the skin of his hand. “Do you?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “I’ll move in with you, god.”

Phil grins, brilliant light gracing his face so vividly that it steals its way over to Dan’s face so that he can’t help a smile creeping its way across his cheeks.  

He brushes Dan’s forehead with a happy kiss, before spinning him around like a pair of dizzy teenagers, bumping against half finished canvases and snagging at the edges of easels.

“ _Phil,”_ Dan laughs breathlessly. “Phil, _stop.”_

They stumble onto the bed squished into the corner of Phil’s bedroom, the quilt making a small whoosh of sound under their weight.

“You do realise its going to take ages until I actually get to live here,” Dan says. “I gotta move all my stuff down here and then run it through with the school, and I have to tell my-“

Phil plants his lips on his, which he doesn’t complain about, but smiles into it, letting his own words be swallowed.  

“Important thing is,” Phil murmurs into his mouth, “You’ll be here _eventually._ This’ll be _our_ home. I’m not gonna have to look for some stuffy kid who’s going to rip through my artwork and then complain about it not being ‘real work’.” He opens his eyes, which are glimmering with contentedness. “I’ll get to live with an amazing boy who I love, and we’re going to leave our trace on the world _together,_ and its going to be beautiful.”

The tips of Dan’s ears turned pink. “Spork,” he huffs, and then more quietly, voice muffled, ‘love you too.’

 

_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> hi i have a tumblr over at @lesteresce so drop in if you like


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